How much is too much?

KennyCelican

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I recently read that dropping chapters too fast can wind up with some kind of 'shadow ban'.

Serious question - how often is too often?

I'm trying to bring my story up to speed with the site I posted it originally, but it updates once a day there, and it's been going a while, so catching up is gonna take a while. My intent was to drop one an hour until it was caught up, but if there is some kind of 'no more frequently than this', I'd really like to know before I launch... Which since I intended to launch just after midnight tonight, now has me a touch worried.

Have I managed to YET AGAIN stumble into a new and exciting way to mess up my fiction launch on an entirely new site?
 

Dec

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There is no such thing as getting shadowbanned for dropping too many chapters at once.
You can get delisted from the main site if you manually reorder the chapters. That's all.

As for "how much is too much," that depends. If you post too many at once, you lose potential readers who won't see it on the main site, because you make one big blob.
Now, if you spread it... let's say, once an hour, then you maximize potential reader interest.
 

Tyranomaster

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This is misinterpreted information.

You can only appear in the "recently updated" 2 times in a 24 hour period. This makes people believe that you're shadow banned because you didn't show up there.

Maybe there is some other backend system to flag you if you post like 100 chapters or something, but I believe it's mostly due to the above mixed with people not realizing that it takes more than 24 hours for new series to show up at all sometimes. Someone often creates a new series and drops 10 chapters in the first few hours then freaks out.

Pause. Breathe. Books are like marathons. You do your prep work, make sure everything is good, then post a bit at a time.
 

Tabula_Rasa

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Read:
 

KennyCelican

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There is no such thing as getting shadowbanned for dropping too many chapters at once.
You can get delisted from the main site if you manually reorder the chapters. That's all.

As for "how much is too much," that depends. If you post too many at once, you lose potential readers who won't see it on the main site, because you make one big blob.
Now, if you spread it... let's say, once an hour, then you maximize potential reader interest.

Oh thank all that is holy.

Thank you. I was low key panicking. Because I've spent the last four months off and on, plus the last week hours-per-day loading chapters, then the past few days scheduling the first few days' worth of releases at roughly one-an-hour. I really hoped there wasn't some kind of 'no, that's too fast' automatic 'will not show on main site' thing.

Because at the current rate it's gonna take me six weeks before it's caught up and I can just cross post my new chapter every day. Any slower and I'd be looking at next year before it's caught up.

Thanks again!
 

KennyCelican

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I have stories about LLM generated slop. Okay, one story, and it involves a review-swap where I pointed out the AI generated flaws, after which the author removed his 'AI Assist' flag and report my review for having untruthful information about his fiction. All that after I read through the first three chapters, which was... Painful.

But no, I've just got a fiction with a lot of chapters on another site, and some of my readers said SH readers would like it, and I've been meaning to migrate / duplicate it here for a while. But I do one chapter a day, and I'm trying to get it caught up sometime before the end of the school year, which means I need to do lots per day.

Thanks everyone! My heart rate will now return to normal!
 

Humanistheart

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There is no such thing as getting shadowbanned for dropping too many chapters at once.
You can get delisted from the main site if you manually reorder the chapters. That's all.

You can get delisted from the main site if you manually reorder the chapters. That's all.
What’s delisted mean? What do you mean manually reorder? As opposed to what? thx
 

Dec

The Evil Mage
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What’s delisted mean? What do you mean manually reorder? As opposed to what? thx
Delisted means it is not visible on the main site.
Manual reorder is when you, an author, manually change the chapter order so it is different than the default (just after upload) one.
You can find more detailed info here:
 

TinaMigarlo

the jury is back. I'm almost too hot for smuthub.
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There is no such thing as getting shadowbanned for dropping too many chapters at once.
You can get delisted from the main site if you manually reorder the chapters. That's all.

As for "how much is too much," that depends. If you post too many at once, you lose potential readers who won't see it on the main site, because you make one big blob.
Now, if you spread it... let's say, once an hour, then you maximize potential reader interest.
yes. because when you spread em, it always maximizes reader interest.
Freud, has spoken.
 

KennyCelican

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yes. because when you spread em, it always maximizes reader interest.
Freud, has spoken.
So one an hour for forty two days... Is that spread wide enough?

Amusingly, I am one of those authors whose toes are perpetually JUST this side of the 'we ban your fiction, we ban your account, we ban your cow' line, apparently. Every time they shift their policies regarding explicit material I've had to adjust things just a little. Or a lot.
 

KidBuu699

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So one an hour for forty two days... Is that spread wide enough?

Amusingly, I am one of those authors whose toes are perpetually JUST this side of the 'we ban your fiction, we ban your account, we ban your cow' line, apparently. Every time they shift their policies regarding explicit material I've had to adjust things just a little. Or a lot.
Too much. If you want to start getting them out do an initial dump of about 5 chapters and then wait a day. Then drop 1 or 2. Then wait a day and rinse/repeat.

Also I would suggest that if you are doing this just until you get to your caught up point to make a note of in on the chapter. That way the reader knows no to expect this high rate of drops after you hit your point.
 
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KennyCelican

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Too much. If you want to start getting them out do an initial dump of about 5 chapters and then wait a day. Then drop 1 or 2. Then wait a day and rinse/repeat.

Also I would suggest that if you are doing this just until you get to your caught up point to make a note of in on the chapter. That way the reader knows no to expect this high rate of drops after you hit your point.
I have, at present, nine hundred and fifty-six chapters to catch up on. I add one a day. Two a day is not gonna catch me up before the endgame of the thing. At twenty-four a day I'm looking at six weeks of posts. At two a day it'd be some time in late 2028. Even at seven every three days I'd be looking at early 2028 anyhow.

I did put a note in the synopsis about what I'm doing, so folks will know that when things are caught up in six weeks it will drop down to one a day plus occasional bonus chapters.

Thanks for the heads up, though! I do appreciate the advice, I just... It doesn't work for what I'm tryna do?

That's for you to decide.
If you so wish, you can also post 2 or more chapters at once. But this might overwhelm readers.
Most authors here stick to one a day anyway, usually one a week.
I'm gonna avoid two-at-once, because... Okay, I had all kind of reasons, but they all come down to 'bad vibes'. But I do want to get SH caught up ASAP, so I'm looking at 12-24 a day, and if 12 is 'oh, wow', I figure I might as well do 24 a day, since that will catch SH up at a sort of major plot point. Well, okay more a 'recurring foreshadowing event', but still.

I will be dropping to one a day plus bonus chapters after that though.
Delisted means it is not visible on the main site.
Manual reorder is when you, an author, manually change the chapter order so it is different than the default (just after upload) one.
You can find more detailed info here:
From reading the guide, it seems like resorting after all scheduled chapters are up is okay?
 
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Dec

The Evil Mage
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From reading the guide, it seems like resorting after all scheduled chapters are up is okay?
Truth be told, no idea. I'm not an published author here.
Ask that question in the tutorial thread so someone who knows better can answer you instead. And maybe update the tutorial for it too.
All I know is that resorting them will delist them from the main page.
 

CharlesEBrown

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I recently read that dropping chapters too fast can wind up with some kind of 'shadow ban'.

Serious question - how often is too often?

I'm trying to bring my story up to speed with the site I posted it originally, but it updates once a day there, and it's been going a while, so catching up is gonna take a while. My intent was to drop one an hour until it was caught up, but if there is some kind of 'no more frequently than this', I'd really like to know before I launch... Which since I intended to launch just after midnight tonight, now has me a touch worried.

Have I managed to YET AGAIN stumble into a new and exciting way to mess up my fiction launch on an entirely new site?
AFAICt, that was a false rumor from people overreacting to not appearing on "Recent Releases" because they overloaded some variable and it just didn't count them, they assumed it was a shadow ban.
 

TinaMigarlo

the jury is back. I'm almost too hot for smuthub.
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So one an hour for forty two days... Is that spread wide enough?

Amusingly, I am one of those authors whose toes are perpetually JUST this side of the 'we ban your fiction, we ban your account, we ban your cow' line, apparently. Every time they shift their policies regarding explicit material I've had to adjust things just a little. Or a lot.
christ, I'm gonna piss my pants laughing.
yeah, I just got "adjusted". or, I'm in the process of getting adjusted.
looking like I might have been too hot for ":smut hub", though the jury is still out.
fingers crossed. hope I don't lose volume one, of a three volume story.
its just over a million words, total.
I get first volume "adjusted"?
hello, plot hole. LIke, you can drive a freakin' state highway SNOW PLOW through it, sideways.

wattpad, they just banned my fiction. left my account, and the two volumes dangling.
a reader commented later.
"what's going on? Page one... why don't you explain anything going on?"
I'm too embarrassed to say what happened. what would I tell the poor reader.
"well, see, you have to pretend 600 thousand words, was still there up front, explaining what's going on. But just start reading, you'll pick it all up from inference."
yeah, readers don't work like that.

dude. "we ban your cow".
you kill me.
lol.
 
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